Research Projects
Tropical Rainforest in Expedition Journals
This proposal is to conduct a comparative analysis of Ellis Rowan’s memoir The Flower Hunter: The adventures, in Northern Australia and New Zealand, of flower painter Ellis Rowan (1898) about her experience of visiting tropical rainforest in Queensland, Australia, with the journals of two people who travelled through the forests of the Congo in 1908 and 1909. This will allow consideration and analysis of perspectives of tropical rainforest in two countries in a comparable era. The latter journals are held in the Smithsonian libraries of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the National Museum of African Art (NMAfA). They are: A.B. Rendle, E.G. Baker and S. LeM. Moore’s An account of the plants collected by the Ruwenzori Expedition (1910) and M. W. Hilton-Simpson’s Land and peoples of the Kasai being a narrative of a two years’ journey among the cannibals of the equatorial forest and other savage tribes of the south-western Congo (1911). A third journal is M. W. Hilton-Simpson’s Journal of the Congo expedition: Containing narrative of the journey, personal notes, geographical notes (1909), which is available as a digital resource, a format that will enable me to begin my research before travelling. This project is designed to build on a major grant application submitted in March through the Australian Research Council to study rainforest representation in Australian fiction and life writing. The Smithsonian proposal does this by expanding the scope internationally. Should the DECRA be successful, this Fellowship would coincide with and support the literature review phase of that project.
Long-acting antimalarials for malaria chemovaccination NHMRC Ideas Grant - GNT2036883
Associate Investigator
Mitigating heat stress in tropical sheep systems through novel feed solutions
Rising temperatures and intensifying heatwaves in tropical Australia pose a growing threat to sheep welfare, productivity, and the long-term sustainability of the livestock sector. This project investigates the use of feed additives as innovative strategies to reduce the impact of heat stress in sheep.
Sensors to detect body temperature in heat-stressed sheep
This study aims to validate sensors as a reliable indicator of core body temperature in heat-stressed sheep.
Supporting expanded and new research opportunities between JCUS IT and JCU’s Australia campuses
Proposal to visit JCU campuses to create new cross-discipline research opportunities as well as further exploit existing research that has been conducted solely in JCUS so far.
Prototyping virtual field trip resource design with an active immersive blend
JCU Learning and Teaching Innovation Grant, 2024 recipient, for developing virtual field trips
Success and failure in climate (im)mobility policy solutions around the Indo-Pacific
There is a prescient and ongoing need to better understand the drivers, patterns, and required support structures for people, households, and communities engaging with decisions around climate-related (im)mobilities. What we also know is that in these spaces of climate and disaster governance, preparation is exponentially more cost-effective than rapid response.
We propose two key activities to manage the problem of understanding success and failure in climate policy possibility solutions in the Indo-Pacific.
The first aspect is developing a baseline of climate (im)mobility policy solutions. This would involve developing a typology of climate (im)mobilities policy clusters to both highlight the diversity of mobility types that exist within this broad governance area and provide clarity towards what policy and practice should focus on for improved outcomes for people and communities.
The second aspect of this project extends beyond its academic research-based roots to share the findings with policymakers and practitioners across the region. Therefore, we will directly engage with key stakeholders, sharing policy-focused interpretations of the findings and opening up a dialogue to understand the barriers to putting in place the practices we argue for. After these consultations, we will progress to a short, impactful monograph that brings together the academic and the practical to express both the state of climate mobilities governance across Oceania and where the field is heading in the future.
Leveraging native soil microbiota to target melioidosis pathogens in Northern Queensland
Melioidosis is a serious disease caused by the soil bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei (Bps). It is a major health concern in Northern Queensland and other tropical regions. As our modelling predicted, and as confirmed by the sharp rise in local cases in 2025, the incidence of melioidosis is likely to increase with ongoing climate change. At the same time, growing resistance to life-saving carbapenems is making treatment more difficult.
In previous work, we identified Burkholderia ubonensis, a harmless soil bacterium that can selectively inhibit Bps. This finding suggests that native soil microbes may offer a new way to control Bps in the environment and could also provide a source of novel antimicrobial compounds. This project builds on that discovery. We will identify and characterise additional Bps-inhibiting microbes and compounds from Northern Queensland soils, with the aim of developing both environmental control strategies and new therapeutic options for melioidosis.
The role of restoration in conserving matters of national environmental significance (MNES) (Old ID 25011)
This project will review and assess the capacity of active restoration to secure conservation outcomes for Matters of National Environmental Significance across four habitats: giant kelp forests, seagrass communities, saltmarsh communities, and shellfish communities.
Hookworm peptide therapeutic for oral treatment of IBD (Old ID 26317)
We intend to develop an orally delivered peptide that can modulate the immune system and be developed as a therapeutic for inflammatory bowel disease. We have identified a peptide, derived from a hookworm protein, that alleviates the clinical symptoms of experimental colitis when orally administered to mice. The peptide has bioactivity with human cells ex vivo and displays desirable drug-like properties. The aim of this project is to acquire further data on the mechanism of action and formulation conditions to facilitate formal product development prior to licensing and clinical trials.